College Twitter rap for touting on neighbour’s turf

They may say at Tesco that “every little helps” — but Bromley College faced criticism that it had overstepped the mark by touting for students in a supermarket on a rival’s patch.

The college initially tweeted at lunchtime today that it was at Lewisham Tesco, and invited anyone interested to “come along and find out about the courses we can offer”.

This prompted FE Week editor Nick Linford to raise the question of whether colleges ought to be competing on each other’s patches — after FE Commissioner Sir David Collins criticised the practice before Christmas as a waste of limited funding.

It sent Bromley into defensive mode, with it then tweeting: “We are here as almost a third of our students live locally and it’s important students know their options.”

Lewisham Southwark College principal Carole Kitching also chipped in, after it was suggested that Bromley shouldn’t mind its rival placing “pop up banners on your [Bromley’s] lawn”.

But Sam Parrett, principal of London South East Colleges, which now incorporates Bromley College, told FE Week: “Marketing in London by London colleges has, and always will, cross boundaries due to good transport links. There is no such thing as a patch.

“We are all keen to encourage as many people as possible to improve their career opportunities by gaining a qualification and developing their skills.”

She added: “Around 2,000 Lewisham residents have chosen to study at Bromley College during the past year, due to the wide range and high quality of our courses.

“However, it is important to highlight that the borough of Bromley also exports many students to neighbouring colleges.”

It comes after FE Commissioner Sir David Collins complained last October that marketing pitting college against neighbouring college was an important factor preventing the sector from being “sustainable”.

Norman

Ben Owen

Is it a slow news day Nick? I’m sorry but this is a complete non story and has nothing to do with “patches” (not sure what you mean by this as nearly every college has a cross border issue)

Another opportunity to have a pop at the sector, highlighting common marketing and promotion practice as somehow wrong, clearly the college know its demographic and is therefore catering to this?? We should really be better than this and bravo to Carole for taking it in good humour.

LRoding

Graham Ripley

There is indeed no such thing as a “patch” and this is axiomatic for any retailing activity and colleges are no exception. For colleges to agree such patches would be tantamount to a cartel, in any event there are plenty of other training providers, universities etc who would ignore such protocols.

Again as in all retailing, competitive marketing can be a severe drain on financial resource. But this is a matter for each college to consider; in this competitive multi provider world we cannot run colleges as an homogeneous micro managed group, but rather as autonomous soviets. Inevitably as with all competitive activity some will thrive and others will wither. That is as all should be.